Ellen Pao talks about 'a-hole' behavior at Kleiner Perkins

This morning in San Francisco, a jury grilled Reddit CEO Ellen
Pao in the gender discrimination lawsuit she's brought against
former employer and venture capital heavyweight Kleiner Perkins
Caufield and Byers.

Pao answered that she thinks other companies were afraid of a
backlash from the powerful Kleiner Perkins, given that she was
pursuing this $16 million lawsuit against them, according
to a
Re/code liveblog.

It's the same reason she didn't hit up her connections at her
former portfolio companies, Pao says: Kleiner Perkins had
millions invested in them, and her coming aboard as an executive
there had the potential to strain those relationships.

Doing so “didn’t seem fair to me, and it seemed like it
would be uncomfortable," Pao said.

Those portfolio companies seem to be doing well, with
Flipboard valued at $800 million as of the end of 2013 and
Datameer raising a $36 million round of funding around the same
time.

Another popular topic was "asshole" behavior at Kleiner
Perkins.

Prompted by juror questions on her use of the phrase "don't
be an asshole" in an e-mail to direct manager and senior partner
John Doerr, Pao explained that it was a common saying at the
firm, and referred to the need to show its portfolio companies
respect — something, she says, the firm had issues with at
times.

For example, she sat in on a meeting between two Kleiner
Perkins partners and two startup founders about an potential
investment. Not only did the two partners vocally declare they
were passing on the investment right then and there, Pao says
they started talking about finding the founders new
jobs.

Also mentioned was a
"resentment chart" that Pao had created, which listed all of the
problems she had with various Kleiner Perkins executives. She
said it was a personal document she had created to work through
her frustrations.

"Once I wrote it down and got it out of my system, I got it
out of my system," Pao said.

In response to a juror question asking if filing this lawsuit
(instead of seeking a
settlement) was a way to punish Kleiner Perkins, Pao had
another brief soliloquy:

Litigation is
painful and difficult. This has been three years of my life. My
information is all public. My emails with my friends are public.
All my emails are public. This is not a good process for
resolving disputes. I wanted something meaningful so I could
avoid all this. I wanted something so they couldn’t feel that
women were at risk and treated unfairly. This is where we’re at
because I couldn’t get them to take responsibility.